As a former Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) I follow on-going debates about certification with a keen interest, not least because my work on the deforestation agenda raises many of the challenges we see with certification and eco-labelling in general. I have often documented my concerns about the market signal sent by certifying species such as Antarctic krill, or even, God help us all, Australian shark fin, which was mooted a few years ago. And given the on-going failure of companies like John West to embrace sustainability, tuna certification has also been one to watch closely.

I’ve also been keeping an eye on the relationship between WWF (who are in a partnership with John West that has left a sour taste in some conservationists’ mouths) and MSC, which according to Saturday’s Times newspaper has reached something of a perilous state. A WWF report has been leaked to several individuals, including me. It’s something of a bombshell analysis of the MSC by WWF (which actually founded the MSC!)

The report documents the ‘troubling, systemic flaws with the MSC scheme’. WWF concludes that the MSC programme has not been what they ‘envisioned’ it to be, and in particular has not been an ‘accurate means for sustainability of the Indian Ocean tuna fisheries’. It’s a damning and painstakingly detailed indictment of MSC’s attempts to accord certification to tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean, claiming that MSC is willing to compromise its own systems and processes in order to secure the blue tick for applicants with deep pockets.

Additionally, the report reveals that MSC is able to give ‘interpretations’ of the Harvest Control Rules (HCR), in order to secure the blue tick for fisheries that are categorically unable to meet the minimum levels set out in the MSC Fisheries Standard. According to WWF, MSC’s financial interest in the outcome of certifications is now playing too big a part in the
process, because the MSC receives royalty fees on the licensing of the blue tick logo. Ouch.

The Times has reported WWF’s rebuttal which claimed that this was an unchecked ‘draft of an internal paper’. Having seen the
document, fully designed and laid out, spattered with detailed references, I find that rebuttal slightly hard to believe. The document pdf is even named ‘FINAL’! It’s for others to decide how draft or not this was. You can read it here: wwf-retrospective-indian-ocean-tuna-hcrs-final-2-1-1

This episode yet again shines the spotlight on certification and the credibility of even the most ‘gold standard’ schemes. In general I remain a supporter of certification as a tool for better resource management. But I am sometimes reminded of that brilliant quote by Eric Hoffer: ‘Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business and ends up as a racket’.

I’m an environmentalist; it is what I do for a living, and what I will always be. Politically, I can’t muster any enthusiasm for the mainstream parties, and I’m actively hostile to the likes of UKIP. I wish, therefore, that I could support the Green Party. It should be my natural political home, if only it were able to galvanise not just those converted to the sustainability movement but those – like me – actively immersed in it every day.

Unfortunately, from my vantage point, they are about as credible as Michael Foot’s Labour Party. And, having read their policy documents, not much different ideologically. Their current ‘surge’ may give them hope of some kind of electoral breakthrough. I fear such optimism would be misplaced.

The first problem is their positioning. The Greens come across as anti-business, anti progress, anti aspiration and anti enterprise. They share the sort of Utopian idealistically rooted thinking that gave birth to The Diggers in 1649, and The Levellers around the same time. And they didn’t last long.

There is a terrible irony here. Given the massive opportunities in clean technology, a leaner competitive economy, the extraordinary advances in renewables, scientific progress that makes the last two millennia pale, there ought to be room for an economic policy platform that marries green thinking with economic benefit.

The second problem is more parochial – the structure of the party. For many years, two ‘co-leaders’. The Greens’ strongest asset, Caroline Lucas, is in Parliament but no longer leader. A leader who is not in Parliament and who, despite her media background, is unsuited to the media age. Will the public vote in large numbers for an Australian calling for re-nationalisation of the railways and transgender rights? Stranger things have happened, but not many.

All this is compounded by an appearance and feel that screams of looking backwards (to 1649) and inwards, and managing to do both at the same time. There is no political savviness, no smart cultivation of the media, no stand out proposition, no sense at all of the momentous potential inherent in environmental capitalism.

I read that they aspire to participate in government at a national level. But a Green Party which behaves like a 1970s protest movement, is split down the middle and has turned its Brighton government into an acrimonious mess isn’t a terrific signal that the they can deal with proper grown up office.

Despite my loathing of all that UKIP stands for, it has built its remarkable popularity, which could swing the general election, by adopting clear, if mad, policies, and communicating them with skill. Even making a virtue of the deliciously bonkers clangers its troops excel at with such reliable regularity.

It has been said the Greens are too ‘nice’ for politics. A look within the party and its internal machinations would quickly negate such a claim. Arguments disguised as ‘consensus building’, the tortuous right of dissenters to have their voice and express it at will, endless policy motions, sub clauses, votes and amendments, and earnest corridor discussions between activists on how to demolish the capitalist system, oh so gently of course. It’s a nice club to be in if that’s your bag, but a serious political force it can never be.

So come on Greens, step up a bit. Find a leader who can do for the 21st century green argument what Farage has done for 1950s bigotry. Abandon Old Labour policies and embrace a vibrant, entrepreneurial lean economy. Forget the obsession with wealth (you might need more wealthy donors) and corporate power (you might need that too) – focus on the irrefutable arguments for the circular economy, renewables, cleaner, greener spaces and quality of life. If your policies on migration and transgender rights alienate the mainstream, ditch them.

A Green Party in 2015 should be an innovator like Google or Apple. Instead, it looks like Kodak, which kept its head firmly lodged in the sand as mobile photography replaced film. Kodak went bust. It’s a warning worth heeding.

Here’s an article I wrote for Business Green, reproduced at Greenbiz.com about why I’m sceptical of the ‘behaviour change’ agenda. http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/06/06/4-reasons-mothball-green-consumer-behavior-change

It’s a puzzling place, Norway. On the one hand, like its Scandinavian neighbours, the country boasts a far higher degree of environmental sophistication than Britain and several other Western democracies. Electrified transport systems and renewables are years ahead of ours; recycling and the quest for locally sourced produce are deeply engrained in the national consumer fabric. The country has also taken a leadership position on climate change, notably pledging vast sums to combat deforestation in the developing world. The people in charge of this effort are impressive, dedicated and decent.

Yet there are some alarming peculiarities. Whaling is one, and it continues to hamper Norway’s image as a paragon of sustainability. But a newer aberration is the country’s sponsorship of Arctic drilling, and the bizarre decisions of its best-known energy giant, Statoil, which, as its name suggests, is 67% state owned.

Statoil loves talking (or rather, washing) green. It has spent millions on the now traditional advertising and marketing push so beloved of big polluters, with slogans about ‘fuelling the future’, encouraging ‘elites’ to recharge their phones at handy Statoil-funded points in airports, and generally exuding the benefits of natural gas, renewables and the like. A few years ago the company genuinely seemed to stand out from its peers, particularly the less edifying operators like Gazprom.

Now Statoil, in cahoots with its national government, is in a show down with green campaigners over its attempt to drill in the Norwegian Arctic, specifically the Hoop area of the Barents Sea. The plans present a real and present danger to the Bear Island wildlife sanctuary, a haven for rare species and the threatened polar bear. In the past few days, Greenpeace activists have managed to stall Statoil’s progress, but it’s clear the Norwegian government’s allegiance lies firmly with the company, not the marine environment.

This folly threatens not just the Arctic (a spill could reach Bear Island in less than a week), but the international reputation of the Norwegian government as a responsible player in the international climate debate. Few have commented on the supreme irony of Norway investing billions in curbing deforestation worldwide whilst allowing Statoil’s reckless emissions joyride in the Arctic. Surely one would effectively cancel out the other?

A big share of Norwegian wealth is based on oil drilling and state-owned oil Statoil is becoming increasingly aggressive. The standards by which Statoil operates within Norway are fairly high, but at the same time the firm is now engaged in one of the most damaging ecological gambles in the world. Statoil, by the way, has also invested in the tar sands projects in Canada and deep sea drilling off Brazil. Strangely, they don’t talk about this much at the handy phone recharging units or in their green adverts.

Statoil has lined up three exploration sites, and is now positioning itself to take the lead in Arctic drilling, just as Shell looks ready to throw in the towel after two years of squandered shareholder money, not to mention global humiliation and ridicule.

If Norway is to safeguard its increasingly precarious reputation as an environmental champion, it must use its political power over Statoil to stop this deadly escapade in its tracks before it’s too late to clean up the likely damage. In the meantime, it will be hard to expect emerging economies to take any lectures from the Norwegian authorities about climate change. I wonder what the many excellent climate diplomats in the Norwegian government make of it all.

Today, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Group announced it will commit to the protection and restoration of 1 million hectares of forest across Indonesia. For more details on that, visit http://tiny.cc/2gv0ex and also this very good context-setting piece in Mongabay: http://tiny.cc/w8w0ex

As always, some will say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, that APP has made commitments before, and so on. All true. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for even the most hardened APP cynic to deny that this company has moved very far, very fast. And furthermore, APP has not been found wanting in responding to the concerns and demands of its fiercest critics, many of whom are now becoming critical friends, sitting at APP’s side to help the company deliver what no-one has done in Indonesia (or well beyond) ever before.

First, in February 2013, came the Forest Conservation Policy, and an immediate cessation of natural forest clearance. In partnership with The Forest Trust (TFT), APP switched off all bulldozers in its supply chain. Immediately. The moratorium has held, and the commitment remains as strong as ever.

Some NGOs wanted APP to stop all use of natural forest fibre (which had been cleared before the moratorium and was stored in the field) in its mills. APP responded and no more natural forest fibre was allowed past any mill gate from midnight on Sepember 1st 2013.

Others demanded APP commission a completely independent evaluation of its performance. APP has asked the Rainforest Alliance to do just that, and work is now underway.

And then there was the major elephant in the room – conservation and restoration. APP stated it was on the table, but that it needed time to work out the details, much of which was impossible whilst High Carbon Stock and High Conservation Value assessments were underway across its 2.6 million hectare estate. True to form, APP has now unveiled what pretty much everyone agrees is a ground-breaking and hugely ambitious programme to work with international and local NGOs, government and industry at large to preserve 1 million hectares of forest.

All this, combined with progress on social conflicts (inherent in so many comparable supply chains), and a vast programme of implementation work that is transparently reported, warts and all, on a dashboard available to stakeholders across the public and private sectors. I’m a former long-time critic of APP now working closely as an advisor to help the company implement its ambition. In case you think I have to say these things, don’t take my word for it; Greenpeace’s view is here: http://tiny.cc/tjv0ex

Yes there’s a long way to go. Yes there’ll be lumps and bumps along the way. But for those who still want to believe this company will renege on its promises, dilute its zeal, or be distracted from its revolutionary transformation, I suspect they’ll be waiting a very long time. The past is well and truly behind APP, and, crucially, many of the company’s critics are leaving it behind too. We now depend on them helping continue and accelerate what could become the most spectacular corporate turnaround in modern history. There are many civil society groups and customers holding APP to account, and that’s exactly how it should be. But APP’s leaders have worked tirelessly to win trust, and should be rewarded for doing so. It’s not just the right thing to do, but sends a powerful signal to those who think they can get away with business as usual. They can’t and they won’t.

Greenpeace and the good people at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight are right to hold Tesco to account for wriggling out of its sustainable tuna pledge (see http://tiny.cc/i9olcx) Cheap, untraceable tuna has no place on supermarket shelves if we are to save this precious resource from collapse. But consumers need to do more than simply ask for brands like Oriental & Pacific to be delisted.

A few years ago, I brokered a deal between Greenpeace and a large Ecuador-based tuna firm. As part of the process of building relations, my client agreed to investigate what it would in fact cost them to provide so-called ‘FAD-free’ tuna (caught without the use of fish aggregation devices). This meant working out how much fish each boat in their fleet would catch, and calculating whether the crew, fuel and additional trip length cost could be justified. It could, but only if the market price for the tuna in question increased by a factor of at least seven, as each vessel would catch far less fish.

Western consumers never pay the true price of their food to incorporate the environmental costs of production and tuna is no exception. Were the big operators like O&P to insist on FAD-free tuna, Tesco would need to be able to sell it on at about £14 a tin, rather than the ‘great deal’ £2 offer you would find in stores today. Consumers would never pay that price, so Tesco, and its fish processors, would need to absorb the bulk of the true cost if it was serious about marine conservation. The chances of that are, of course, nil. For as long as we insist on eating cheaply produced rubbish that takes no account of the price we should actually pay to preserve renewable resources for the future, the demise of tuna stocks, and much other ‘natural capital’, is entirely inevitable.

Next year many will opine endlessly and deliriously about the success of environmentalism in changing business. There will be so-called ‘game changing think pieces’ (yes, such a phrase really exists) about ‘innovative disruption’ and many other suspect hallmarks of the sustainability movement I have documented often enough. There will be conferences, rankings, social media campaigns and Harvard Business Review case studies of how business is changing the world. 95% of them will be insufferable nonsense, eagerly lapped up by the lazy, the ineffectual and the wide-eyed rabbits that have progressively colonized the green movement in recent years.

Personally, in 2014 I’m only interested in things that are demonstrably making a difference. I’ll be looking for more companies and governments committing to zero-deforestation, preferably with The Forest Trust (TFT) or other comparable bodies, if there are any, that actually lead companies to turning off bulldozers and protecting biodiversity. I’ll be looking for oil companies abandoning, for good, Arctic exploration (I have a possibly naïve hope that Shell will do this, under shareholder pressure). I want companies to commit to never buying fuel that comes from this pristine eco-system. We need more commitments of the kind most recently made by Wilmar, the palm oil giant. And bold leadership from CEOs who, in the absence of political will and NGO unity, must become campaigners themselves, like it or not. Some (Branson, Polman, King et al) already are.

I’d like to see a clear environmental analysis of fracking, a robust assessment of how much of the world’s only source of renewable protein (fish) might be saved by marine reserves, and progress on global climate talks (I’m not holding my breath). I hope to see smarter economic analysis, properly communicated, of the transition from our dead carbon economic cul-de-sac (fossil fuel) to the potential for a living carbon, cellulose-based global economy. Not in slogans or hyperbole, but facts, based on evidence. I hope to see Greenpeace, the only really effective global campaigning NGO, claim more scalps and an even greater share of NGO media coverage. I’m sure they will. They are brave, bold, and usually right. We need more of this.

What I’m ignoring completely next year are companies boasting ridiculous accolades such as ‘GRI 4 compliance’. Recently, a casino firm called Caesar’s achieved the endorsement of this box-ticking claptrap, despite the fact the company’s mission is to encourage addictive gambling whilst its catering empire includes Nobu restaurants, which serve up endangered Bluefin tuna (an IUCN red-listed species). Beyond parody, Nobu informs customers of the fact that what they are eating will soon be gone. It’s written on the menu. Anyone that hails (pardon the pun) Caesars as a sustainability or ‘CSR’ success story is, in my book, either gullible or a greenwasher. It will happen, I promise you.

I’ll be turning a blind eye to all idiotic half-baked claims about ‘consumer behaviour change’, unless backed by hard evidence of that concept beloved by green academics but practiced by virtually no-one. And there’s no point in being a ‘green’ business if you are unable to remain profitable or popular with your customers (M&S, poster child for yurt-based Masters Students, springs to mind).

On that note, I unwittingly bought, via a friend who was heading there, some bin bags from M&S recently, that came pre-wrapped in, er, a plastic bag, instead of the usual card wrap-around. Not very ‘Plan A’ is it. Even that ‘icon’ has some way to go, not just in getting people to buy its clothes so they bother to ‘shwop’ them, but also by putting its rubbish bags in something that isn’t, when it arrives, already guaranteed rubbish, destined only for the landfill heap. It was a ‘scented’ bin bag roll, as it turned out, which must explain the need for the plastic wrapping. But do we need scented bin bags if we’re going to ‘disrupt’ and ‘innovate’? I think not. And my kitchen now smells like a dental surgery.

If the green business case still depends on M&S, a modest retailer in size and commercial performance, all these years after Plan A, we’re in some trouble. They’ve done way more than pretty much anyone else, yet M&S remains a bit like T’Pau or a-Ha. Everyone loves them but no-one quite remembers why. And a few years in, no-one can name more than a couple of big hits.

I’m also not interested in more and more companies or producers getting ‘certified’. It’s obvious to any vaguely independent observer that certification of the world’s natural resources is at best rewarding the ‘ just about ok’ whilst ignoring the majority of the world’s resource production, which continues to exploit and denude at will, fuelled by market demand. Eco-labels and certified produce is mostly about placing a stamp of approval on the small proportion of the world’s trading economy that was, for various reasons, already operating vaguely as it should. Sometimes it even rewards stuff that shouldn’t be given any green or social accolade. It’s not actually changing a single thing on the scale needed. Look at the world’s forests, fisheries, and agricultural production. Labels everywhere (around 30 between them I think), yet the fate of all three worsening by the hour.

Lastly, I will no longer engage in any discussion with sustainability ‘academics’, who give unwitting credence by association to JK Galbraith’s observation that if all the world’s economists were to die tomorrow, it would make no difference whatever to the global economy. I lost too much time debating with a ‘climate academic’ about air travel in 2013. Never again – I’d have been better off wasting my time on a monocycle trying to get to Asia than engaging in such futile discussion. If you can be bothered, the debate will be published in the New Internationalist in the New Year, but frankly I’d spend your time on something far more useful!

Whether we work in business, NGOs, government or elsewhere, 2014 and beyond are about demonstrable, measurable action. We’ve been talking for decades, and achieved almost nothing. It’s time to stop kidding ourselves and to focus on the battles we can still win, before it’s too late. Now is the moment for fresh thinking, a quickie divorce from NGO/sustainability world comfort zones, and a permanent abandonment of tired old clichéd mantras based on little practical understanding of the world’s real challenges. Most of all, we need to take the big issues one at a time and fix them. Not shielding under the umbrella of cosy concepts, frameworks and slogans. Actually out there arguing for change and progress, issue by issue. That’s what I’ll be doing in 2014. So I won’t see you on the CSR conference circuit or even very much on this blog. I’ll either be near an ocean, forest, or in a boardroom. I hope to see you there, not here. Happy New Year!

As an avid Twitter user (@bmay), I follow trends in sustainability with interest, and tune in to the daily green business chatter that pervades my timeline. Much of it is hugely valuable as a source of news. But increasingly, I find myself tuning back out of much of the discussion due to the sheer volume of meaningless jargon that is proliferating the social media sphere. Insofar as I can make it out, the sustainability business community is now striving for something that could be amalgamated as this:

Except of course that it isn’t, and I’ve worked in this field for over fifteen years, and plan to continue doing so until my last breath. More importantly, none of this is resonating outside the cosy sustainable business community, which is possibly rivalled only by the Vatican in terms of its inward-looking ability to speak entirely to itself. Occasionally, a new convert is picked off from a shoddy or unheard of company, and everyone congratulates themselves on how well the ‘movement’ is doing. It’s doing appallingly badly, in my view. Particularly considering its size and collective weight. All those NGOs, think tanks, ranking systems, awards, conferences, publications, retreats, multi-stakeholder platforms (there’s a phrase for you) and social media attention. With what result? A handful of businesses on a journey to somewhere with almost no-one outside the CSR world aware of any of it. I’d like to see a metric that regards this as a success story.

There is also a growing yawn factor in the same companies being trumpeted on the same conference circuit all the time. We all know who they are, and many of them are indeed very impressive. But do we really need to hear from that retailer or FMCG company again? Granted, these leaders have a role in persuading others to follow them. But the events at which they do so are set up in the wrong way, targeting the wrong people. 300 junior CSR Managers eagerly lapping up the words of one or two actually interesting and progressive CEOs or Sustainability Directors, despite all their good intentions, aren’t going to save the world.

It’s time to simplify the sustainability movement, bin the jargon and focus on outcomes. Whenever my eyes are glazing over at the drivel spouted by some academics, practioners and NGOs on Twitter, there are occasionally flashes of light. Simple, powerful concepts. We don’t want Arctic Oil, thanks. We don’t want deforestation. We won’t tolerate corporate thugs putting campaigners in prison. We want sustainable fish to sustain the billions who depend on it for protein. We want healthy soils so we don’t run out of food. We want abundant and varied wildlife enriching our natural resources. And yes, we want brave business leaders to develop strong points of view, champion these issues, and do the right thing.

What we don’t need is any more ‘framing’ (another irritating word, up there with ‘narrative’). Systems re-design; CSR 4.0; planetary engine optimization. Do you like the last one? I made that up as a joke, but I have great faith I could get some traction for it quite easily if I could be bothered. But it would be a huge waste of my time, and everyone else’s.

Out there (by which I mean away form the sustainability business circuit) no-one’s really listening. Consumers want things done simply for them, making the best environmental choice easy to identify. ‘Consumer behaviour change’, that loathesome half-baked concept, is not going to persuade the pension funds invested in Shell to get out. It won’t stop companies destroying Africa for new palm oil development, or alter the flow of Chinese finance that is altering the world’s resource ownership. It also won’t stem the race for middle class status that is well underway in emerging giant powerhouses like Indonesia. It won’t stop temperature rises, and it won’t even elect governments that are vaguely interested in the future, except by accident, occasionally. We should bin it and banish it from our ‘narrative’ (oops).

We’d do better to focus on where the big impacts lie – in the huge business to business transactions, the trading and commodities world, the financial institutions that must bear responsibility not just for economic collapse but ecological ruin, and the giant conglomerates that are slow to change, but vastly important when they do. I don’t hear much of this on Twitter or at conferences. What I hear is new terminology, new phrases for things that are blindingly obvious. I hear about how brands have great power and can make all the difference. They certainly have power: quite often a consumer boycott campaign leads to sales of whatever is being boycotted going up. Where does that leave your behaviour change, eh?

I hear very few new ideas. Everyone is too busy trying to be clever, as opposed to getting on with the job and changing things. I don’t hear any insights about WHY forest governance is difficult in some countries or how to create marine reserves that benefit fishermen. I learn about what forums and frameworks might be deployed. They nearly always fail. Those kinds of critical issues are of course being tackled, but seldom by the ‘practioners’ who bang on about them. The real progress is happening far away from summits on behaviour change, where the air is hot enough to give runaway climate change a run for its money. The real progress is being made by organisations and companies who would regard a CSR conference as a poor use of resources. And all this, I believe, is why specialist journals like this aside, there is such woeful mainstream media coverage of the responsible business agenda. It’s boring, it’s repetitive, and a lot of it is downright nonsense.

Eric Hoffer once said, ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. The ‘#sustbiz’ movement has reached the first two milestones. It should avoid the third if it wishes to remain relevant. And anyway, there’s a very good old world for all this: environmentalism. It’s barely ever used. Perhaps it got crowdsourced out.

This article was first published in Business Green, in July 2013. Sadly, given Shell’s partnership with Gazprom and the unjust detention of the Arctic 30, it’s even more relevant than it was three months ago.

If Shell executives thought things had gone a bit quiet after the delay to their Arctic joyride last summer, they were soon corrected when the Greenpeace Shard protest happened. Shell isn’t entirely stupid when it comes to future energy challenges. There are probably worse companies around. Which is why its continued bungling over the Arctic, infamous not just among environmentalists, but noted by the Financial Times and other defiantly non sandal-wearing institutions, is so extraordinary.

Shell does not understand that increasing numbers of citizens around the world are unwilling to tolerate its gamble into one of the last great pristine corners of the planet. Investors are none too thrilled either – a deep sea drilling accident in the Arctic would make BP’s Deepwater Horizon liabilities look like a tea party (and not of the Palin variety, despite the same Alaskan backdrop). Shell’s arguments for Arctic drilling have been pitiful, and can be summarised (and demolished) as follows.

1. People have already drilled in the Arctic. Well, yes, but much of the drilling thus far has been in vastly different conditions to those proposed by Shell. A helpful comparison might be to compare paddling in a kids’ swimming pool with deep sea diving in a rough ocean. Shell does have experience in the North but there is a big difference between the North and the Arctic. Almost all of Shell’s “Arctic” experience has been 1,000 km further south than their planned wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Sea ice conditions – which constitute one of the biggest risks to Arctic drilling projects – are very different and much less challenging in these waters. No one has successfully done what Shell is proposing to do on this scale in Alaska, and many scientists believe the harsh conditions in the region actually make it simply impossible to do it safely.

2. It’s going to happen anyway, as the Russians will go ahead regardless. It’s true that Russian oil and gas companies seem determined to push ever further north; though how technically and commercially viable many of these proposed projects will be is yet to be proven. Moreover, Russia hasn’t exactly been a beacon of excellence in its own exploration efforts. There have been a series of environmental calamities, and plenty of evidence of local populations literally having to wade through fields of spilt oil. Russia’s recklessness on environmental matters does not provide a moral or commercial argument for Shell, which should know better. Unlike Shell, Russia does not advertise its sustainability credentials either. Now Shell is exploring Arctic entry through the back door, with its new pals Gazprom and Mr Putin. Could a sustainability image get much worse other than hiring Gerard Depardieu as the face of it all?

3. It’s better that we do it because that way it will be safely done. This from a company that initially proposed an oil spill safety plan involving sending a small dachshund (yes, one) to have a sniff about in the event of a problem. It was “safety first” Shell that managed to ground one of its ageing drilling barges, the Kulluk, off the coast of Alaska (prompting questions over whether the vessel was being moved to a more tax efficient location in Washington State). Shell also managed to damage a containment dome during testing, and a fire broke out on its Noble Discoverer rig, leading to the discovery of 16 safety violations on board by the US Coast Guard. And despite repeated assurances that during the summer months, Shell would not encounter any big ice, drilling in the Chukchi Sea was abandoned almost immediately because of a major ice floe appearing, bringing the madness to a temporary halt. I don’t want these people anywhere NEAR the Arctic’s people or wildlife, thanks.

4) We need this oil. Yes, in the way that an alcoholic needs an extremely large vodka, and then another. If we pursue “new” sources of fossil fuels that will only come on stream in 10-20 years’ time and are very expensive to extract, we assume everything that is available now, and cheaply, will be burnt. So we’re betting on an unsafe world in climate terms. The only economic argument that makes Shell’s Arctic lunacy commercially viable is a world unviable in terms of climate change and its impacts. The International Energy Agency says we need to leave two-thirds of fossil fuels in the ground to have a shot at avoiding catastrophic climate change, but if Shell then hedges by saying “but not me, not now, not here”, then our generation has invested in a fatal future infrastructure in a bet against a safe climate. Many investors know this, even if Shell doesn’t. It is completely insane.

Shell has comprehensively failed to engage with stakeholders on this issue. Its emergency response plans and pre-emptive lawsuit against NGOs have all combined to make Shell the perfect poster child for activists. Again!

Of course we must accept that fossil fuels are not going to disappear overnight. We also have to understand that future energy demand will require a mix of solutions and technologies. But these undeniable facts do not mean we have to destroy the Arctic to provide that mix.

The only way forward now is probably a bold market signal by business customers that they do not want their companies fuelled by Shell’s recklessness. There are many progressive business leaders out there who might jump at the chance to differentiate. So here’s an idea: “Arctic free fuel”. Bear with me.

I have already heard a few people say “that’s impossible”. Oh yes, and so is dolphin safe tuna, deforestation free palm oil, child labour free cotton, pesticide free food, and BPA free baby gear. It’s just all too difficult because of supply chains and how these things are produced and traded. Except hang on – all those things already DO exist.

Indeed, some towns are now declaring that they will be “tar sands free” municipalities. Oxford has become the first “tar-free City” in Europe. Of course you can segregate fuel according to its source. If there’s a will, there’s a way. I well recall people saying you could never segregate palm oil; it was technically and commercially impossible. What they meant was they “would never” do it. Of course, they did in the end. At present, there’s just no will when it comes to the Arctic. Which provides a huge opportunity for business leaders to lead.

I’d like to see a progressive businessman like Sir Richard Branson develop a narrative that runs broadly as follows. “I run an airline. I do what I can to explore alternative fuels and designs to minimise our impact. I take advice from the right people. But I accept we are dependent on fossil fuels and a major contributor to climate change. I’m also an explorer and a citizen and I’ve seen some of the Earth’s most beautiful and pristine places. The Arctic is one such place. I cannot and will not add to the planet’s fragility by running my business on the fruits of Arctic oil drilling. It’s a step too far, and I believe there are some parts of the natural world we must now leave ALONE. That’s why Virgin Atlantic will operate on ‘Arctic-free fuel’ for as long as I’m in charge.”

Think of the market signal that would send. Of course, it needs cross-sector collaborative and pre-competitive approaches – no one company can do this (or anything comparably meaningful) alone. And it isn’t just fuel, it’s about the use of Arctic resources for a range of materials, such as plastics, clothing and so on. If a group of progressive CEOs, from airlines, consumer goods firms, clothing companies and packaging giants, were to send out this “Arctic-free” message, then the seemingly impossible would become a market imperative for energy companies. It’s been done in other sectors, many times over.

There is no perfect fossil fuel, and there will always be social and environmental issues around any oil extraction. But we can draw a line in the Arctic ice. We must do so without delay. The question for Shell is whether it could potentially be a beneficiary of such a trend, or the lonely laggard that failed to wake up to what its customer base was saying.

Shell portrays itself as a buzzing hub of innovation, exploring the frontiers of new energy sources in a fast changing world. In its stubborn refusal to abandon its Arctic misadventure, it confirms it is still, at its core, a fossil fuel hungry dinosaur. The question is whether Shell will finally see sense, and get out before it’s too late.

Brendan May

Brendan May is Chairman and Founder of Robertsbridge, a leading global sustainability consultancy formed by some of the world’s leading environment strategists. He is a former board member of the Rainforest Alliance, former Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council and a regular commentator on sustainable business issues.